Second Harvest

 I think of the first harvest as the spring cole crops –broccoli, bok choi-- and cool weather greens like the many kinds of lettuce, radishes, arugula, mustard.  Now we are in the midst of the second harvest: zucchini, pattypans, frying peppers, yellow squash, pole beans green and wax, red cabbage, Oriental eggplants and, we hope, Italian type eggplants soon.  We have already dug our garlic and are drying it in the gazebo. Shallots should be ready this week. Rhubarb begins in late spring.  I made a great rhubarb compote yesterday and froze enough for 2 pies.  Cherry tomatoes should be ripe by now, but the sungolds this year, for us and for several gardeners I know, are not happy or productive. Red and black currants are still producing but the cherry tree is done. The birds and us got plenty of them. Beets should be ready next week or the week after.  The first paste tomatoes are coming in slowly.

The third harvest, of course, is the fall harvest – pears, apples, tomatoes and more tomatoes, lots of polebeans until frost, winter squash, pumpkins, leeks, Brussels sprouts, the fall cole crops like Chinese cabbage and radicchio and more bok choi. parsnips. After the first hard frost, it’s just fertilizing, plowing, pulling done plants and tidying. 

It has been hot and humid here but no rain. The sky was milky from the Western fires.  Yesterday it began to clear up and today it’s all blue.  We have gone from raining every day to a drought now.  Since climate change hit us, we no longer have the seasonal progression of temperate weather we were used to.  My first ten years here, we didn’t bother with air conditioning.  I’d pass out now. Air conditioning is the last electrical appliances I’d give up.

I’ve been reading primarily poetry and nonfiction lately.  THE WHEEL OF TIME by D. W. Kreger is interesting about the origins of our modern holidays in Neolithic beliefs but I have caught him in a few errors and also references to Judaism that miss the point.  I read a bit of Kay Ryan, all of Eve Lyon’s TIKUN OLAM: Repairing the World  and Maggie Smith’s GOLDENROD.  I watched  some of the Olympic opening but turned it off quickly.  I’ll likely watch a few of sporting events like gymnastics and track and field.  Woody likes beach volleyball. I think it’s the women in bathing suits.  I also sometimes watch kayaks racing. Canoes, whatever. But time is short and the Olympics are very long – unless everyone comes down with Covid.  They’ve made a good start on that.

Nobody knows what to do about the un-vaxxed visitors that overwhelm the Cape in summer.  They greatly outnumber us, about 15 to one, so any diseases they bring us spreads fast. The Cape has very high rates of vaccinations.  In Wellfleet, almost everyone except children got vaxxed.  But not the visitors.  I’m back to not eating inside a restaurant, just sit outside or get take-out.  I may never go to a movie theatre again.  At least the library is finally open a bit, three times a week for a few hours, people strictly numbered as is the time inside. It’s better than nothing.

I write two or three poems a week, revise them if I can and then send them out.  I had three acceptances this week – pretty good!  Tonight Wilderness and Chuck are coming over for supper. I’ll make a pot roast with root crops and a salad, maybe zucchini ambrosia.  Wilderness is bringing dessert. We’ll start with our own gravlax.